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Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 4th, 2019 09:11 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. I tried to read this book in high school, and bailed at about the part where Esther’s boyfriend I guess? but she doesn’t seem to actually like him Buddy Willard strips off and she mentally compares his dangly bits to a chicken gizzard. It just struck me as unreadably depressing - not just that particular bit (that was more of a “straw that broke the camel’s back” moment), but the way that it encapsulates Esther’s general feelings about people in general, the faint weary distant disdain.
I found it less crushing reading it now, possibly because I don’t identify with book characters as instinctively as I did as a teenager (whether or not I actually had anything in common with a character), and so Esther’s way of thinking felt less sticky to me this time around. Because it did feel sticky - like walking through cobwebs - you walk away from it and it clings to you long after you walked through.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m still reading along in Marie Brennan’s Turning Darkness into Light. The translation of the ancient text is heating up! It took me a while to get into it (it’s a translation of an ancient epic, and generally I struggle with ancient epics, even made-up ones) but all of a sudden I’ve gotten invested not only in the epic itself but in the political background to its translation. Why, given his history of anti-Draconean sentiment, is Lord Glenleigh paying Audrey and Kudshayn to translate this epic - right before a conference that will discuss the legal status of the Draconean people worldwide? His scheme is unclear but probably dastardly.
I’ve also read onward in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition. A lynching has just been narrowly averted (but the white man who actually committed the crime - in blackface, in order to pin it on a family retainer - has escaped scot free), and now Mrs. Carteret is contemplating whether to share her inheritance with her half-black half-sister, as per the terms of their shared father’s will. Will justice prevail?? UNLIKELY.
What I Plan to Read Next
Finishing The Bell Jar means that I’ve finished my most recent book list, so after some thought I’ve decided that my next booklist will be the Newbery Honor books of the 2010s. My eventual goal is to read all the Newbery Honor books, but there are two to four books per year for going on a century, which makes… three hundred or so books, give or take…Oh my God.
So I’m doing it by decade so that each individual book list seems more feasible. In the 2010s, I’ve actually read all the books from 2014 onward, plus a smattering from earlier years, so I’ve got only eight books to go! First up: Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. I tried to read this book in high school, and bailed at about the part where Esther’s boyfriend I guess? but she doesn’t seem to actually like him Buddy Willard strips off and she mentally compares his dangly bits to a chicken gizzard. It just struck me as unreadably depressing - not just that particular bit (that was more of a “straw that broke the camel’s back” moment), but the way that it encapsulates Esther’s general feelings about people in general, the faint weary distant disdain.
I found it less crushing reading it now, possibly because I don’t identify with book characters as instinctively as I did as a teenager (whether or not I actually had anything in common with a character), and so Esther’s way of thinking felt less sticky to me this time around. Because it did feel sticky - like walking through cobwebs - you walk away from it and it clings to you long after you walked through.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m still reading along in Marie Brennan’s Turning Darkness into Light. The translation of the ancient text is heating up! It took me a while to get into it (it’s a translation of an ancient epic, and generally I struggle with ancient epics, even made-up ones) but all of a sudden I’ve gotten invested not only in the epic itself but in the political background to its translation. Why, given his history of anti-Draconean sentiment, is Lord Glenleigh paying Audrey and Kudshayn to translate this epic - right before a conference that will discuss the legal status of the Draconean people worldwide? His scheme is unclear but probably dastardly.
I’ve also read onward in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition. A lynching has just been narrowly averted (but the white man who actually committed the crime - in blackface, in order to pin it on a family retainer - has escaped scot free), and now Mrs. Carteret is contemplating whether to share her inheritance with her half-black half-sister, as per the terms of their shared father’s will. Will justice prevail?? UNLIKELY.
What I Plan to Read Next
Finishing The Bell Jar means that I’ve finished my most recent book list, so after some thought I’ve decided that my next booklist will be the Newbery Honor books of the 2010s. My eventual goal is to read all the Newbery Honor books, but there are two to four books per year for going on a century, which makes… three hundred or so books, give or take…Oh my God.
So I’m doing it by decade so that each individual book list seems more feasible. In the 2010s, I’ve actually read all the books from 2014 onward, plus a smattering from earlier years, so I’ve got only eight books to go! First up: Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.
